Reply #11: Doom3 is coming..... [View All]

[Occulus]

And-

Oh. My. GOD. It looks fantastic. Better than anything mentioned in this thread, including Halo, Max Payne 2, Half Life 2, and all the rest. The graphics engine that powers Doom3 is literally revolutionary.

You know those CGI cinematics that so many games have- those movie cutscene where you can do nothing but sit and watch very pretty graphics that are so much better than the game itself? Well, in Doom3, the engine that drives the gameplay graphics is the same one that renders the cutscenes... in real time. The camera literally jumps out of the player's head, runs the cutscene, and then jumps back in, smoothly and seamlessly transitioning from cutscene to gameplay.

There's more. Doom3 also uses a physics engine that's second to none, allowing for particle effects on a level never seen before. Per-particle collisions allow a character to take a shot in the arm and have it affect only that arm, making enemies much harder to kill off. Additionally, Doom3 also uses very sophisticated ragdoll physics- if you kill off a zombie standing at the top of the stairs, for example, that zombie will convincingly tumble down the stairs.

However, the one thing that has always set id's games apart from the rest is the fact that they have always been solidly behind user-created maps using their games. From the original Doom, which was edited by the users with Doomcad, to Quake3 Arena and the Radiant editor, every popular id game from Doom on has also been treated as a palette for the user to create his own maps.

The editor for Doom3 will be no exception. In an interview with John Carmack and Todd Hollenshed (sp?), they claimed that the editor shipping with Doom3 will allow the user to not only create his own maps, but will also allow for full-length animations, movie style. It's entirely possible that this editor, along with the graphics and physics engines, will for the first time allow gamers to make short films using a game. One of the people I mentioned above used their editor and Maya in the same sentence, saying that theirs is "certainly much cheaper than Maya."

There's a video on the net taken from the E3 convention this year. It's rather large- 65 meg, I think, and totally eye-popping.

The video can be found here:

http://www.fileplanet.com/files/120000/123889.shtml?r=5

as well as other places all over the net. Enjoy!